


When Lardo Met Shitty

by VictoriaPyrrhi



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 'Swawesome Secret Santa, F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 06:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2762627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriaPyrrhi/pseuds/VictoriaPyrrhi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Larissa doesn't expect to meet B. Knight, but she's sitting on the roof of the Haus and she's really glad she did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Lardo Met Shitty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kate (Kavinskysdick)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Kate+%28Kavinskysdick%29).



> Done for the 'Swawesome Secret Santa exchange, which I was super thrilled to be a part of! My gift recipient is Kavinskysdick on Tumblr, and I hope she enjoys it!

"When Lardo Met Shitty”

Larissa takes WGSS210 “Multicultural Perspectives on Women in Popular Media” the first semester of her freshman year because it looks interesting and it fulfills her multicultural requirement in a way that doesn’t involve taking two art history courses with Dr. Fossy (because she's read the reviews of Dr. Fossy, ok). Also the description mentioned something about studying comics, which is pretty baller. It’s not that she doesn’t think there’s value in the examination of “Asian Art and Architecture,” it’s that she thinks her brain will actually leak out of her ears if she has to take two art history courses and she wants to go ahead and get all her basic requirements out of the way ASAP. 

She slides into a seat near the middle of the room--not too far forward or too far back--and pulls out her notebook and a pen. She’s doodling absently, mind stuck on the Kandinsky shit they’d been looking at in her last class when the seat next to her is occupied, loudly. She looks up, more curious than irritated, even though the force of the sitter nearly knocked over her Coke, and is treated to a startling pair of green eyes and the worst mustache she’s ever seen, which is saying something. He's also wearing a fucking Suns Out Guns Out tank top with cargo shorts and tattered flip flops, and he's probably just another dudebro looking to hookup with hot chicks in Women's Studies, but really, the whole effect is so amazingly bro-tastic she almost doesn't care. It’s like staring into a living, breathing stereotype. She tries not to be disappointed that he’s not wearing a backwards visor with sunglasses. 

He catches her eye and gives her a smile and a 'sup nod, and she returns the gesture and figures that that's that. Their teacher walks in a moment later, introduces herself as "Natalie," and they get started. She learns that the walking mustache's name is B. Knight, which is really uninformative, and she wishes she knew what trick he used to get his first name automatically omitted like that. 

Class is interesting on its own, and Larissa is on cloud 9, especially once Natalie starts laying out their syllabus for the semester. A couple of movies, some comic books to read--she's not even upset by the prospect of a group project or the 20 page research paper. Class ends early with a minimum of boneheaded questions in general and none at all from B. Knight, and she thinks that this is going to be a pretty awesome way to spend her first semester at Samwell. 

She gives B. Knight another nod as they head out, and he returns it, still smiling under the caterpillar growing on his upper lip. 

The thing is WGSS is MWF, but it seems like now that she's seen B. Knight, there is literally no escaping him around campus. They don't talk a lot outside of class, but every time he sees her, he gives her a huge grin and the bro-nod. It’s kind of weird, but considering he isn’t trying to skeeze on her or actively be an asshole at her, she doesn’t really care much. The second week, he catches her doodling in class, opens his mouth, and she wonders whether he’s going to be a dick about it or just ask The Thing. Instead, he asks, 

"That's my mustache, yeah?" She can't decide if this tension in her shoulders is fight or flight and she doesn't say anything, just nods. "Solid," he says, and holds out his fist. She bumps it hesitantly. "You could make it a little more solid, though," he adds a second later. 

If it were anyone else, Larissa is pretty sure she'd be offended at the unsolicited critique of a notebook doodle. Instead, she just raises an eyebrow and says, "Grow a better 'stache, and I will." 

He laughs. “Working on it. You can’t rush art, man.” Larissa snorts, but can’t deny she’s smiling. “Shitty,” he says after a moment.

She looks up, scowling because, “The fuck?” He’s holding out a hand.

“You can call me Shitty; everyone does.”

“I--um. Hi, I’m Larissa.” Because that wasn’t weird at all; she shakes his hand, even though they’ve been in class together for two full weeks now. 

“Art major, or compulsive doodler?”

She smiles a little. “Both?”

“‘Swawesome.”

“Um.”

Shitty just smiles like this is a completely normal exchange. Larissa tries not to think about it, especially since Natalie is starting to discuss the ramifications of the ‘97 adaptation of Cinderella, and that shit’s fascinating.

\---

“Dude!”

She’s out on Lake Quad because the trees are just starting to turn, and if she waits long enough, she can catch the sunset setting the trees on fire. It’s fucking perfect and one of her favorite things. Shitty’s waving at her from halfway across the Quad.

“Yo.” She doesn’t get up because her bench is awesome and it’s still warm with the sunlight, and if she moves, she’ll lose her seat to one of the other student vultures hanging out. “What are you doing over here?” She looks up. He’s kind of blocking her light, and she’s still a little baked, so she tells him just that.

“My bee,” he says. She thinks he’s smiling, but the mustache is coming in a little better, so it’s getting harder to tell. “I’m meeting my best broski over by the Beach; thought I’d say hey.”

It doesn’t sound like a line, and Larissa tells herself that’s the reason she scoots over and pats the bench. Shitty sits, but doesn’t sprawl, despite the fact that she had definitely left enough room for him. It’s...nice. He’s nice.

“How high are you right now?”

“Ehhhh,” she says.

“Nice. Good stash?”

Larissa laughs a little, still sun warmed and relaxed. She looks over at him mischievously and pokes his upper lip. “Good ‘stache,” she says.

That is definitely a smile, she thinks. “Nice.”

Shitty’s friend, when he arrives, is tall, dark, and built, and Larissa tries not to stare, but she’s an artist, and she blames that (and the residual high) on the first words out of her mouth to Jack Zimmerman being, “I want to paint you.” She doesn’t even like painting.

Shitty falls off the bench he’s laughing so hard, and then again when Larissa punches him in the arm for being a jackass. 

“Is it weird that that isn’t the first time someone’s told me that?” Jack asks after Shitty finally stops laughing enough to introduce them. 

Shitty slaps him on the back. “Nah, bro, you’re beautiful. Cheekbones for miles, who wouldn’t want to paint you?” They look to Larissa for confirmation, Shitty assured and Jack blushing faintly.

She sighs because there’s no getting out of this now. “Yeah, pretty much. Like, no offense? I don’t think you’re a piece of meat or anything.”

Shitty pokes him in the side, lifting a bit of Jack’s t-shirt to reveal cut abs. “I dunno, he’s kind of a piece of meat. But you know, in the subjective, non objectifying sort of way.” Jack squirms away, laughing a little.

“I dunno, man, I’m feeling a little objectified here.”

Larissa laughs, and finds herself going to eat dinner with them. Shitty makes the mistake of challenging her to a pasta eating contest and she smites him and has to roll herself into her 6:30 studio. 

Studio is--well, she enjoys her major, but it’s color comp, and she’s never been the best with that. On the plus side, she’s made some friends in her major classes, even if she is currently cursing the color wheel. Jules, purveyor of her earlier high, nudges her about halfway through the studio course.

“Good afternoon?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“No problem. Listen, a few of us are going to a house party tomorrow. You wanna come?” 

And yeah, she could kind of go for a party--her first college party. It’s a little uncool to be excited about it, but Larissa figures what the hell, she may as well own it. Indifferent art kid stereotypes are the kind of bullshit she wanted to leave behind in high school.

“That would be awesome, yeah.”

“Sweet. You’re over in Cromwell, right?”

“Yeah; shoot me a text and we can meet up.”

\----

Friday, Shitty’s in a fine mood, sliding into the seat next to hers with a grin and honest to god whistling. Larissa pokes him in the arm with her pen.

“What’s got you all perky this morning?” 

“Oh, Larissa, you sweet summer child. It’s that most wonderful of days--tonight’s the first Haus Party of the year!”

“What’s a Haus Party?” 

Somberly, he claps a hand on her shoulder. “It is only the best experience of your college career.”

“I’m a freshman--the bar’s pretty low right now.”

“Dude, how did I not know you’re a frog? You have to come! It’s a right of passage.”

“For who?”

“Everyone. Tonight, c’mon.”

“I’m sorry; I kinda already told a friend I’d go to a party with her tonight,” she says, and is startled to find that she is actually a little sorry.

“Oh, that sucks, but hey. There are more Haus Parties and you’ve got yourself an open invite, bro.” 

And that, that’s actually kind of touching in a way that she isn’t sure how to respond to. She punches him in the arm. “Thanks, man.”

So of course, it fucking figures that when Jules comes and grabs her for the house party, they end up in the front yard about a half-mile from her dorm of a house that looks like it’s about to fall into a thousand tiny pieces of kindling any moment.

“Welcome to the Haus, hon.”

“The...Haus.”

“Yeah; the men’s hockey team, idk, owns it or rents it or--” Jules frowns and looks at the tenuous structure. “You know, actually, I have no idea how they stay in this place. But people will tell you that the Lacrosse team throws the maddest parties, but those people are wrong.”

“DUDE! LARISSA!!” And yep, that is definitely a drunk Shitty standing on what is a possible crumbling banister. She waves sheepishly. 

“Bombs away,” someone yells, and Shitty dives off the porch and into something that might or might not be a kiddie pool. She is not going to ask questions.

Shitty holds his beer up, “Didn’t fuckin’ spill a drop! Hey, thought you weren’t going to make it?”

She smiles a little and shrugs. “Same party, apparently.” 

Shitty grins. “Fuckin’ baller. Come, let’s get you some gross ass free beer and start off your college experience right.” He slings an arm over her shoulders, and thus, Larissa decides later, is the start to a beautiful friendship.

Somewhere around her third awful Natty Light, she gets introduced to Ransom and Holster and then she gets pulled into beer bong and resigns herself to being claimed by Shitty as “PONG LIFE PARTNER.”

Everything is worth the hangover Saturday morning. And part of Sunday morning.

\-----

The Haus Party changes something, and she isn’t quite sure how to label it, so she doesn’t bother. Shitty, she learns, is a PoliSci major, which makes her wrinkle her nose and give him a look that makes him backpedal slightly. 

“AND Women’s Studies, bro! I’ve got facets.”

“You’ve got something, alright.” He slings an arm around her shoulders, and she doesn’t shrug him off. “You really enjoy it?”

“What? PoliSci? It’s interesting, but it’s not really my favorite. It’s more to get my shitstick dad off my back. He means well, but that whole side of the family,” he waves his hand vaguely. “Big money, big ideas, most of them ass-backwards.”

She learns a lot of things about Shitty. That his folks are divorced, that he’s the broiest bro to bro, but also a really good listener, that he’s bisexual, that Jack’s his best friend. 

Larissa learns that Shitty has a great weed supplier, that he wants to share, that he reads his textbooks for fun. She learns that he owns Wonder Woman underpants the hard way, one morning after she ended up accidentally crashing at the Haus. She learns that she’s kind of into it.

\-----

It’s November and Larissa finds herself staring at the entrance to Faber for the first time. Shitty’s been poking at her to come to a home game since the season started and she finally managed to get a night free that wasn’t full of studio or homework or job hunting. She’s about to enter when she gets a text from Shitty.

DUDE COME AROUND TO THE LD!!

She blinks, shrugs, and slips out of line. Shitty’s waiting at the loading dock door, head sticking out and illuminated by the flood light.

“Oh man, you are a fucking lifesaver. We really need your help. Can you work a time clock?”

“Um.”

“It’s super easy, but our usual dude just called in with like, the fuckin’ mumps or something.”

Larissa shrugs. “Yeah, show me what to do, I guess.”

And that’s how Larissa ends up watching her first hockey game--fiddling with a cranky touchpad and jammed in a tiny box between a dude keeping track of the scoresheet and one of the Samwell college radio station DJs she recognized from her mandatory stats class doing his best announcer voice. 

It’s...surprisingly fun. Larissa’s never been huge into sports. She grew up in a town where the local high school football team may as well have been gods, and to say that it got a little irritating was an understatement. She was used to the kinds of athletes who expected the world to be handed to them, who expected to be worshipped and praised just for existing.

She watches Shitty slam into his teammates, laughing and smiling, and Larissa thinks, Oh. 

\-----

They win, and afterwards they end up in a scuzzy, perfect diner, and she eats as much as Shitty and Jack, though maybe not as much as Johnson. Tomorrow is Saturday, and she’s got a draft due on Monday, but she knows that she’s probably going to end up at the Haus, drinking shitty beer and eating shitty pizza. 

She’s surprisingly ok with it. 

\----

Larissa gets a smiling Shitty outside her dorm door on Wednesday.

“So you were looking for a job, yeah?”

Her hair is falling out of her ponytail, and she’s still got pillow creases on the side of her face. She’s wearing a sweatshirt that she realizes belatedly she stole from Shitty’s floor two weeks ago. Larissa wants to be embarrassed, but Shitty’s kind of stopped dead in his tracks, staring at her, and she flushes.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” 

Shitty swallows. “I...job. Yes?”

“Um, English, bud. I know you can do sentences.” 

“We need a manager and you need a job. Ya wanna?”

And that’s how she finds herself in the middle of Faber in her underpants in November for what Shitty keeps shouting is “Hazeapalooza.” He’s also shouting it while double-fisting beers, so she’s not entirely sure if it’s legit. Her only consolation at the moment is that her hair is long enough that it’s vaguely keeping her warm, and that there are a few other frogs with her, including Justin and Adam.

She wonders if it’s going to be a problem that she can’t skate to save her life, and figures that ultimately, if they wanna haze her, then they’re going to have to deal with it. Marshy steps up, giant pair of aviators on, and surveys them. 

"Before we begin, it is time to engage in that most time honored of Samwell Hockey traditions, the hockey nickname!"

"But what if we already have one?" someone asks; Larissa doesn't recognize him. 

Marshy glares at the guy. "Your nickname sucks, Brown! Your new hockey nickname is...Brownie."

The kid looks like he's about to protest, but snaps his mouth shut. Marshy narrows his eyes. "That's a good tadpole." He marches down the sparse line of freshmen, pointing. "Holster....Ransom." Justin pulled a little fist pump. Larissa looks up at Marshy, one eyebrow raised. "Shitty! You wanna do the honors?" Marshy grins and maybe it's a trick of the light in the rink, but she thinks that Shitty might be blushing a little. He gives her a considering look. 

"Lardo!"

The motto for the night seems to be "blindfolded, naked, and bitch-ass shitfaced," and by the time she's all of the above, it absolutely doesn't matter that Shitty's tying on her pair of skates and pulling her to her feet. 

"You guys're fuckers," she slurs. "Fuckin' obstacle course." 

"We're the worst," he agrees cheerfully, skating backwards and pulling her along. 

"You're pretty all right," she says and it comes out ridiculously fond--a sentiment that lasts about a long as it takes for Shitty to gain speed and then let her go to coast along. She doesn't scream, though it's a near thing, and just as she thinks that she's about to fall or hit the wall, there's a pair of warm, rough hands at her waist, stabilizing her. 

Shitty's voice is in her ear, "Not so bad, yeah?"

"I lied. You're a fucker. You're the fuckiest fucker and you owe me shots, assbutt."

They give her a pass on the obstacle course because she's never been on the ice before, much less on skates, and she finds out later that they had to borrow skates from Coach's 10 year old daughter to fit her. 

In return, she gets claimed again as Shitty's pong partner. They're both pretty shitfaced, but she eyeballs Ransom and Holster on the other end of the table, and gives Shitty a grin. 

"Let's destroy them." 

"That's my girl. SHOTS you fuckers let's do this!"

It comes down to a lucky shot, Lari--Lardo knocks back the final shot and shoots her ping pong ball and watches in utter satisfaction as Ransom and Holster look completely demolished (Shitty tells her later that she burped in their faces and that it was the most epic thing he'd ever seen).

\----

Sometime around three in the morning, she ends up on the roof of the Haus, warm despite the cool November air, tucked up underneath Shitty's arm. It's nice. The kind of nice that she could really get used to. 

"Lardo, huh?"

"Seemed fitting. Pretty sure you can eat more than me and Jack combined."

"I like it," she tells him. She nestles in closer, because she is absolutely cold, and if Shitty hugs her a little tighter, well that's just an added bonus. 

"That's good. Means you're sticking around, yeah?" His fingers thread carefully through her hair. 

"Yeah." She takes a chance and rests her head on his shoulder. "Yeah, I'm sticking around."


End file.
